Seniors delighted to show accumulation of artwork

By HOMER MARQUEZ hmarquez@hearstnp.com

Published
3:37 pm CDT, Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Wayland Baptist University senior art students get ready to show their course work at the Senior Practicum Exhibition beginning Friday. Pictured are Robert Hovey (left), Tami Patterson, Nina Wyre, Monte Ratchford and Steven Burgin. less

Wayland Baptist University senior art students get ready to show their course work at the Senior Practicum Exhibition beginning Friday. Pictured are Robert Hovey (left), Tami Patterson, Nina Wyre, Monte ... more

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Photo: Courtesy Photo

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Wayland Baptist University senior art students get ready to show their course work at the Senior Practicum Exhibition beginning Friday. Pictured are Robert Hovey (left), Tami Patterson, Nina Wyre, Monte Ratchford and Steven Burgin. less

Wayland Baptist University senior art students get ready to show their course work at the Senior Practicum Exhibition beginning Friday. Pictured are Robert Hovey (left), Tami Patterson, Nina Wyre, Monte ... more

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Seniors delighted to show accumulation of artwork

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Plainview has always done well to support the artistic creations of those in the community, and on April 10 art lovers will have a chance to admire the works of local students with the Wayland Senior Art Show at the Abraham Art Gallery.

"The Wayland Senior Practicum Exhibition is actually a capstone class which culminates in the first professional exhibition of the students' work," said Dr. Candace A. Keller, professor of art and art curator at the Abraham Art Gallery and Museum of the Llano Estacado.

"They produce new works during the semester, edit their existing portfolio and select works to show, create print media publicity, and collaborate on all aspects of installation. Each artist is unique and their individual creative voices blending together will make a wonderful gallery experience."

This year, five new artists will show at the exhibition, which will open with a reception from 6:30-8:30 p.m. in the Abraham Gallery, located in the Learning Resource Center on the WBU campus. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and 2-5 p.m. Saturday.

ROBERT HOVEY has spent the past five years attending Wayland Baptist University and is the third generation to attend the school.

"I have been blessed with a loving family," Hovey said. "I am a legacy at Wayland, my father as well as my grandfather before him both graduated from Wayland."

Hovey was born in Plainview while his parents attended Wayland, but has lived in Colorado, New Mexico and Kentucky before returning to attend Wayland.

"The first artwork I ever truly appreciated would be the cartoons I grew up watching. Bugs Bunny, Pokémon and Dragon ball Z; these were just a few of my first experience with art, and they are the ones that have stayed with me as I grew up," Hovey said.

"In my own artwork I find myself using an excessive amount of hard and bold lines in charcoal or pastel. As I continue to develop, I see that the hard lines in my art seems to give the work a life of its own."

Following graduation, Hovey he will be a certified art teacher.

TAMI PATTERSON, 24, was born in Wellington and is the daughter of Ada and Tommy Patterson of Dodson.

Patterson graduated Wellington in 2010 and enrolled at Wayland the following fall. She is an art and math major and plans to pursue a career in either field after graduating from Wayland in May.

Patterson's art style is realist and simple, and she loves looking for the simple beautiful things around her.

"My art reminds me of times in my life such as being homesick, and times when I am close to others," Patterson said.

"It reminds me of a time in my life when things have gone better and times when things have gone worse. It communicates how much I am loved by friends and family. It shows the simple beauty of our world around us. My hope is that my art has affected at least one person in this life. I would love to remind that God inspired most of my artwork."

Patterson is also inspired by the world around her.

"I hope you like nature, because most of artwork has some in it. Most of my works try to capture a sense of simplicity," Patterson added.

"My family and friends has impacted my works more than can be expressed. Wishes for the future are wonderful things that are hidden throughout my artwork. I hope you enjoy it!"

Patterson is engaged to Jerald Hilton, and the two plan to wed in May.

NINA SYMONE WYRE, 21, was born in Jacksonville. Florida, but has lived all over the world; mainly in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Atsugi, Japan.

Wyre is working on her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Two-Dimensional Design at Wayland, hoping her degree can lead to a career in graphic design or sequential art.

Throughout elementary and junior high, taught herself to illustrate and use mediums like ink and watercolor, influenced by the artistic Japanese culture she experienced as a child.

"My mother grew up being a very creative and wild young woman; dabbling in fashion, painting and journaling," explains Wyre.

"I personally feel she passed down her creative nature onto me, and my father always tells me how that he can see in my art and mannerisms that I'm just like her.

"Though I'm not as talented as my gorgeous mother, I aim to be one day. I want to illustrate like her and have the interior designer flair that she possesses. Flipping through glossy magazines, visiting bookstores and museums, and taking art classes in high school have helped me realize that I truly want to be an artist or a designer. I want to influence people with my art and inspire others to be creative and express themselves, just as my mother has done for me."

While in high school, Wyre began taking more art classes while pursuing a wrestling career. Athletics and art conflicted, causing delayed development in artistic skills needed for college level art classes and to her early retirement from wrestling during her second year in college, which helped her focus more on art and school work.

"My artistic style is a mixture of surrealism and a soft kind of 'new school' style; my works mainly consisting of colorful imagery," Wyre said.

"Subject matter of my art is usually of a dark theme, though I tend to play it up with a fun sort of color palette. I am inspired from novels, movies, alternative music, and sequential art books. The mediums that I work in are: watercolors, colored pencils, ink and acrylic paint."

MONTE RACHFORD picked up art as a stable hobby while is father traveled over the country as a minister.

"It eventually flourished into an obsession," Ratchford said.

Ratchford took art classes until his senior year in high school. When he decided to apply for college, he assumed that art would continue as a very important hobby in his life, but never considered it being a base for my career.

"I took a few art classes the second year of school at Wayland, and it was then that I made a lot of friends and started to feel more comfortable at school," Ratchford said.

"I got to express myself through art and I started to really consider using it as a vocation. Wayland and the art department have taught me the skills and techniques needed to mature as an artist and also have given me the resources I need to continue working as an artist after I graduate. Hopefully, after school, I can use what I have learned at Wayland to teach others the importance of art and creating."

Ratchford said art is his major form of communication.

"I try to form my ideas through painting and drawing. As a person who has trouble showing my ideas and thoughts verbally, art has helped me express my identity," said Ratchford.

"In my collection, 'Nox,' I am trying to communicate through illustrations my view of the infinite universe compared to my perspective of life, which is finite. Combining imagery of personal memories and symbols representing the personal and human, I contrast that with imagery of our universe (mainly the sky we see before us), but also nature."

"This is to remind that we are not here forever but we are connected to a larger and infinitely bigger picture. Because of this examination, I am also posing questions through my paintings about our universe. Wondering how connected we are and if everything begins again at some point. My style is simple and almost primitive but fine lines and little details add more emphasis on what I am trying to explain. The illustrative care free attitude of my style also balances out the construction of the meanings and introduces these grander scale questions in a way that can be approached."

STEVEN BURGIN grew up in Arlington and say lots of different types of art while there.

"Going through high school and the beginning of college, I was not sure at all what I wanted to do. Eventually God showed me and I ended up at Wayland, which to me has been the best choice. Here I came to find out that maybe, actually maybe, I can do this art thing," Burgin said.

Burgin originally started out as a graphic design major and turned into a two-dimensional artist.

"When creating my senior show, I pushed to use the mistakes, or mess ups, to produce individual ideas.

"Many of the color choices that I have made have brought an eclectic feel to my show."

Burgin said the paths he has taken in life and art have pushed him to come up with the best ideas he's had thus far.

"When producing the art that I have created for this show, I made many plans," Burgin explained.

"Having the best made plans in art is a good plan. But most of the time, to be honest, these didn't work out. Either the eyes were weird or the blue color on the left didn't match the blue on the right, the lines were off, or the sizing is weird."

So Burgin decided to embrace all of the technical things that may have messed up, or didn't work out.

These "mistakes" throughout have pushed the art, according to Burgin.

"With these in mind, I have pushed myself forward to created individual ideas, while using color and texture that I've seen in everyday life. The eclecticism of my art is shown through the color use as I began to produce. At the end, I began to think on color and how we relate to all these colors in our lives. Some make us hungry, happy, sad, excited and so on, so why not add them together and try to bring as many feelings at one, while being a little eclectic."

Burgin plans on perusing art in graduate school and eventually teach studio art a college.